GM’s Quest to be a Leader in Autonomous Vehicles Highlighted in New York Times Piece

Josh Cable has 17 years of experience as a writer and editor for newspapers, B2B publications and marketing organizations. His areas of expertise include U.S. manufacturing, lean/Six Sigma and workplace safety and health.

A June 4 New York Times article looks at GM’s big bet on self-driving cars, and suggests that driverless vehicles might be on our streets “sooner than we think.”

In the article, writer Bill Vlasic notes that GM has invested $600 million this year in driverless vehicles and other advanced systems, and poured $1 billion into a Silicon Valley driverless-car startup called Cruise Automation.

Vlasic ponders “whether a company identified with the industry’s bygone glory days can be a trendsetter in 21st-century transportation – and beat out Silicon Valley rivals like Google, Tesla and Uber with no legacy business to encumber them.”

“In shaping its future, GM is betting on products that have yet to gain a foothold in the marketplace and could take years to develop fully,” Vlasic says in the article, which features comments from an interview with GM CEO Mary Barra.

However, Vlasic notes that Barra’s decision to begin assembly of fully automated Chevrolet Bolts in January “was a step ahead of Google and Uber, which are converting mass-market minivans and sedans into driverless models.”

“It went beyond what Tesla has achieved with autonomous controls on its own models,” Vlasic says in the article. “And it reflected the feverish competition underway.”